Mapping Leadership E-Book

Richard Halverson

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 323

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Drawing on twenty years of research in school effectiveness, this book presents a distributed model of task-based school leadership that leads to continuous school improvement. The book outlines the tasks school leadership teams must focus on to improve teaching and learning, grouped into the following five domains: * Focus on Learning * Monitoring Teaching and Learning * Building Nested Learning Communities * Acquiring and Allocating Resources * Maintaining a Safe and Effective Learning Environment Recognizing that the principal is a single actor in a complex web of activity influencing student learning, the focus is not only on the principal's role but on a range of leadership and instructional practices to be shared across the leadership team (including APs, counselors, teachers, and support personnel). These tasks, organized into 21 subdomains, have been demonstrated through extensive research to contribute to improved student learning.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

COVER

TITLE PAGE

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PROLOGUE

1 Distributed Leadership in Action

LEADERSHIP AND SPAN OF CONTROL

LEADER OF LEADERS

DISTRIBUTED LEADERSHIP IN ACTION

TASKS VERSUS SKILLS

COMPREHENSIVE ASSESSMENT OF LEADERSHIP FOR LEARNING

2 Mapping School Leadership

KNOWLEDGE BASE FOR THE CALL DOMAINS

CALL DOMAINS OF SCHOOL LEADERSHIP PRACTICE

THE CALL SURVEY IN ACTION

3 Domain 1: Focus on Learning

1.1  MAINTAINING A SCHOOLWIDE FOCUS ON LEARNING

1.2  RECOGNITION OF FORMAL LEADERS AS INSTRUCTIONAL LEADERS

1.3  COLLABORATIVE DESIGN OF INTEGRATED LEARNING PLAN

1.4  PROVIDING APPROPRIATE SERVICES FOR STUDENTS WHO TRADITIONALLY STRUGGLE

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER TO FOCUS ON LEARNING

4 Domain 2: Monitoring Teaching and Learning

A BRIEF HISTORY OF ACCOUNTABILITY AND SCHOOLS: EMERGENCE OF A NEW MODEL OF INSTRUCTIONAL LEADERSHIP

BUILDING INFORMATION ECOLOGIES TO SUPPORT TEACHING AND LEARNING

2.1  FORMATIVE EVALUATION OF STUDENT LEARNING

2.2  SUMMATIVE EVALUATION OF STUDENT LEARNING

2.3  FORMATIVE EVALUATION OF TEACHING

2.4  SUMMATIVE EVALUATION OF TEACHING

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: INFORMATION ECOLOGIES FOR SCHOOLS

5 Domain 3: Building Professional Community

DESIGNING PROFESSIONAL COMMUNITY

3.1  COLLABORATIVE SCHOOLWIDE FOCUS ON PROBLEMS OF TEACHING AND LEARNING

3.2  PROFESSIONAL LEARNING

3.3  SOCIALLY DISTRIBUTED LEADERSHIP

3.4  COACHING AND MENTORING

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: DESIGN AS A MODEL FOR BUILDING PROFESSIONAL COMMUNITY

LESSONS FOR BUILDING PROFESSIONAL COMMUNITY IN SCHOOLS

6 Domain 4: Acquiring and Allocating Resources

4.1  PERSONNEL PRACTICES

4.2  STRUCTURING AND MAINTAINING TIME

4.3  SCHOOL RESOURCES FOCUS ON STUDENT LEARNING

4.4  INTEGRATING EXTERNAL EXPERTISE INTO THE SCHOOL INSTRUCTIONAL PROGRAM

4.5  COORDINATING AND SUPERVISING RELATIONS  WITH FAMILIES AND EXTERNAL COMMUNITIES

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: ACQUIRING AND ALLOCATING RESOURCES

7 Domain 5: Establishing a Safe and Effective Learning Environment

THE PRACTICES THAT MATTER TO DEVELOP SAFE AND EFFECTIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

5.1  CLEAR, CONSISTENT, AND ENFORCED  EXPECTATIONS FOR STUDENT BEHAVIOR

5.2  CLEAN AND SAFE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

5.3  SUPPORT SERVICES FOR STUDENTS WHO  TRADITIONALLY STRUGGLE

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: INNOVATIVE PRACTICES FOR BUILDING SAFE AND EFFECTIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

8 Mapping Leadership Practice

MAPPING LEADERSHIP PRACTICE

USING THE CALL MAP

CHARTING THE COURSE TO IMPROVED TEACHING AND LEARNING

APPENDIX A: CALL Research Publications

APPENDIX B: Observations about Some Differences in CALL Results between Secondary and Elementary Schools

APPENDIX C: Description of the CALL Research and Validation Project

APPENDIX D: CALL Domains

REFERENCES

INDEX

END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT

List of Tables

Chapter 3

Table 3.1 Key Practices for Supporting the Needs of Diverse Learners in Elementary and Secondary Schools

Chapter 4

Table 4.1 Frequency of Educators Using Formative Feedback Practices

Chapter 6

Table 6.1 Role of Expertise in Teaching Assignments

Table 6.2 Percentages of Teachers Reporting That District and External Experts Understand Their Needs and Provide Helpful Support to Improve the School

Table 6.3 Parent Attendance at Parent‐Teacher Conferences

Chapter 8

Table 8.1 Truman Top 10 Subdomains of Practice

Table 8.2 Truman Bottom 10 Subdomains of Practice

Appendix B

Table B.1 Top Practices in Elementary Schools

Table B.2 Top Practices in Secondary Schools: Teacher Ratings

Appendix C

Table C.1 Cronbach's Alpha Reliability by Subdomain

Table C.2 Rasch Item Fit Statistics for Subdomain Scales

Table C.3 CALL Variance Decomposition

List of Illustrations

Chapter 8

Figure 8.1 Instructional Leadership CALL Map

Figure 8.2 Maslovian CALL Map

Figure 8.3 CALL Theory of Action Map

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Begin Reading

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Praise for Mapping Leadership

Mapping Leadership provides a thoroughly readable, practical guide that makes sense of a large body of research on school leadership. It moves attention away from the leader as an individual to the developer of systems of collaboration. Using tangible examples, the book vividly demonstrates the process of school improvement.

—Elaine Allensworth,Lewis‐Sebring Director, University of Chicago Consortium on School Research

The depth and utility of this book are incredible. I love how the CALL surveys exemplify a range of possible practices. The detailed descriptions in each chapter allow administrators to map what they do against exemplary leadership behaviors. This book is a gift to the field of educational leadership. I can't recommend it highly enough.

—Scott McLeod,Associate Professor, University of Colorado Denver, and Founding Director, CASTLE

Many practicing school leaders, especially principals, find themselves drowning in research on an endless list of education topics. Despite all that is available, leaders still struggle with knowing how to shape sustainable improvements and what tasks are essential for getting there. This book is an invitation to explore distributive leadership and to develop the practices necessary for growing capacity and improving learning for all. I can't imagine a better guide for any leader wanting to think and act differently. The book is your map for an improved future. Use it and share it now!

—Patricia Neudecker,Director, Administrative Leadership Programs, School of Education, Alverno College, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Richard Halverson

Carolyn Kelley

MAPPING LEADERSHIP

The Tasks That Matter for Improving Teaching and Learning in Schools

Copyright © 2017 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

Published by Jossey‐Bass

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The authors have an ownership interest in Leadership for Learning, LLC, which holds the copyright for the CALL survey.

The research reported in this paper was supported by the U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences (Award R305A090265) and by the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, School of Education, University of Wisconsin‐Madison. Any opinions, findings, or conclusions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding agencies, WCER, or cooperating institutions.

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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data

Names: Halverson, Richard, author. | Kelley, Carolyn, author.

Title: Mapping leadership : the tasks that matter for improving teaching and learning in schools / Richard Halverson, Carolyn Kelley.

Description: San Francisco, CA : Jossey‐Bass ; Hoboken, NJ : John Wiley & Sons, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017005480 (print) | LCCN 2017009353 (ebook) | ISBN 9781118711699 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781118711514 (Adobe PDF) | ISBN 9781118711576 (ePub)

Subjects: LCSH: Educational leadership.

Classification: LCC LB2806 .L324 2017 (print) | LCC LB2806 (ebook) | DDC 371.2—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017005480

Cover design: Wiley

Cover image: © Mr Plumo/iStockphoto‐Compass Icon, © Yuri_Arcurs/iStockphoto‐Urban Underground

To our daughters

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Richard Halverson is a Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis in the UW‐Madison School of Education. His research aims to bring the research methods and practices of the Learning Sciences to the world of educational leadership and interactive media. Rich co‐directs the Wisconsin Collaborative Education Research Network and the Comprehensive Assessment of Leadership for Learning project, and was a co‐founder and co‐director the Games + Learning + Society Research Center. He is a former high school teacher and administrator, and earned an MA in Philosophy and a PhD in the Learning Sciences from Northwestern University. He is co‐author (with Allan Collins) of Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology: The Digital Revolution and Schooling in America.

Carolyn Kelley is Senior Associate Dean for Academic Programs in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin‐Madison, and the Jim and Georgia Thompson Distinguished Professor of Education in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis. Her research focuses on educational policy and strategic human resources management in schools, including leadership development, principal and teacher evaluation, and teacher compensation. She co‐directs the Comprehensive Assessment of Leadership for Learning project, and is co‐author (with Jim Shaw) of Learning First! A School Leader's Guide to Closing Achievement Gaps.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It has been a great journey to build and share CALL over the years. The Comprehensive Assessment of Leadership for Learning project was the result of partnerships with colleagues over the past dozen years. We are grateful to the staff at the U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences (award R305A090265) and our program officer, Katina Stapleton, for their support on this work.

Our original CALL research group helped to define the project as a new way to think about supporting school leadership practice. Eric Camburn played a central role in leading the CALL validation process. Matt Clifford helped to connect us with a national audience for CALL and provided invaluable ongoing technical and intellectual support. Jim Shaw, Tony Milanowski, and Steve Kimball provided crucial practical and technical insights to get the project off the ground, and Peter Goff and Alex Bowers gave us the expertise and organizational skills to unlock what CALL was telling us about leadership practices at scale.

The CALL project allowed us to meet and support the education of an extraordinary group of graduate researchers, including Jason Salisbury, Marsha Modeste, Seann Dikkers, and Shree Durga. We especially thank Mark Blitz, whose dedication, vision, and hard work guided CALL through the design process to result in a vibrant school reform tool with a nationwide following. Also, thanks to Mark for his excellent insights that sparked our thinking in Chapter 7.

CALL would not have been possible without the collaboration of our partner schools across Wisconsin and the rest of the United States. In particular, we thank the School Leadership Network; the Georgia Leadership Institute for School Improvement; WestED; the Oakland (California) School District; the Racine Unified, Lake Mills, Burlington, and Madison Metropolitan School districts in Wisconsin; the Wisconsin Cooperative Educational Service Agencies; and the School Administrators Institute for Transformational Leadership. Thanks to Helle Bjerg and Søren Hornskov for their interest and support for translating CALL into Danish and sharing it with their colleagues across Denmark. We are grateful to Jim Lynch and Joe Schroeder from the Association of Wisconsin School Administrators and Kurt Kiefer and Sheila Briggs of the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. We thank Matt Messinger in the Wisconsin Center for Education Products and Services for his patience and support in guiding CALL through the transition from a research project to a viable market product. We also thank Louis Condon and Laura Dunek for their good humor and invaluable legal advice and support through this transition.

The team at Jossey‐Bass has been supportive and patient throughout the process of developing this book. Thanks to the reviewers who helped us to refine and focus our message. Thanks to Julie Kallio and Sarah Hackett for their preparation of the CALL data and organizational help with the manuscript. Special thanks to Julie for her keen eye in poring over the final manuscript and references. We thank the University of Wisconsin‐Madison School of Education, the Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis Department, the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, the University of Wisconsin Survey Center, and the Learning Games Network for their expertise and support. We also thank the Institute for Learning at the University of Pittsburgh, the Wallace Foundation, and the partner institutions in the Wallace project for their support in the development of our initial thinking about the tasks of distributed leadership in schools.

We thank Frank, Sarah, Nate, Erica, Gracie, Nick, and Katja for, well, everything. We especially thank Erica Halverson for reading and providing feedback on every painful page of the early drafts of the book. Thank you so much!

PROLOGUE

Wow, that was quite a year, thought Truman High School principal Trina Meadows. As she breathed a sigh of relief and stretched out at her desk, she listened to the quiet that meant the end of another school year. The last group of teachers, the science team, had just checked out for the end‐of‐the‐year room inspection, and now the school year had officially come to a close.

It was a pretty successful year, all things considered. Graduation went well, with many hugs and mercifully few pranks. Only 35 of the 650 seniors did not make it through the year, a remarkable improvement over the 25% of seniors who did not make it to graduation when Meadows came to the school as principal three years earlier. Not only were the graduation rates going up, but ACT scores and college placement rates were starting to look promising. The gains were not evenly shared across the student community—the special education students continued to struggle to make progress—but there seemed to be a shared sense of progress being made in the school and the teachers were coming together as a staff, committed to improving learning for all students.

Also, it looked as if most of the staff would come back in the fall. Of course, the usual number of last‐minute replacements would need to be made, but the new hiring and retention processes Meadows and the district leadership team had developed seemed to be making a difference. Meadows and her team had met with each of the parents whose children were involved in summer school beginning in two weeks, and she thought she could finally catch her breath.

As she relaxed into her chair, she was drawn to a copy of the school's strategic plan posted next to her window. She leaned forward and opened the top folder on the pile to the list of initiatives that had guided Truman's leadership agenda this past year. It was an impressive list, thought Meadows; she and her staff had accomplished good work. In addition to educating 2,200 students, her team had designed and implemented a new data system that would document teacher practices toward their professional learning goals, a new discipline program, a personalized learning initiative for students to develop study and time management skills, a transportation plan to involve all families in school activities, and a new hands‐on science curriculum that got students and teachers out into the community. Many students, teachers, and community members cared deeply about these initiatives, and Meadows was proud of the ways her team channeled their desire to improve teaching, learning, and support into meaningful programs for students.

Meadows's thoughts turned to the new restorative justice program. Truman's teachers worked with the guidance staff to develop a program for students to make amends instead of submitting to the traditional disciplinary program. Truman guidance staff reported that the zero‐tolerance discipline policies that Meadows and her staff had inherited had the unintended consequence of overpunishing the school's Spanish‐speaking students. The department chairs and the guidance team suggested restorative justice as a path for students to learn about their obligations to the community and to make good on the harm their behavior had caused. At first, a few parents spoke in the press about their fears of declining behavioral standards in the school, but Meadows explained how the new program was beginning to work by inviting students to address the consequences of their actions. Meadows was proud of the efforts that students, staff, and teachers had made over the year to transform the school climate. What is our next step? wondered Meadows. How can we build on the promising start of the restorative justice initiative?

As she reviewed the other initiatives on the list, she reflected on the new teacher evaluation system. The district data team was excited about using this approach to help teachers track their learning goals. At first, Meadows was nervous about this approach: it sounded too much like surveillance, and many of the teachers shared her concerns. Still, a group of math teachers volunteered to use the system to collect data on their professional learning plans, and Meadows was surprised at how the math department meetings began to focus on classroom practice and discussions about what kinds of data should count as evidence for learning. Seeing these good practices in action led Meadows to wonder how to get some of the other departments to participate in the same way.

The other programs on the list led her to similar reflections: each of the new initiatives was built on good research and brought together faculty and staff around common problems that needed to be solved. Meadows thought that she had developed a strong professional community across the school around improvement. She led the effort to develop a shared vocabulary for talking about practice and reform, building on the district initiative to use the right kinds of information to guide their work. Since coming to Truman, she had made a commitment to be out in the school every day, visiting classrooms and making connections with teachers, staff, students, and families so that she was school community. She knew that her colleagues in several other district schools were envious of the community she had built at Truman, and the results her team was seeing made it easier to get support from the district and from families and businesses in the community. It was a good year, she thought, and she should celebrate a job well done.

Lingering over this pile of reports, though, began to make Meadows feel a little uneasy about the road ahead. Although she and her staff had made progress, many problems remained to be solved. Some of the new programs started at Truman seemed to be working, but in other areas, there were big gaps that Meadows had struggled to address. For example, the school had started a new study skills program two years ago when several teachers spoke up about how to support students who needed the most help. It was pretty clear, though, that many teachers did not know about the program and that many of the students who could benefit from it were not involved. Meadows also knew that addressing student learning at the level of study skills did not really get at the real issue: improving classroom teaching. She struggled with how to reconcile the group of educators who wanted a short‐term solution with the others who felt that shortcuts would not solve the problem of student engagement.

She thought about the big problems the school was facing from the surrounding community. Outside the school, the Truman area of the city had been hit hard by the recent recession, and as the unemployment rate rose, the pressure on the school to serve as a safe haven also rose. The number of students on free and reduced‐price lunch had increased 50% since her arrival, and the numbers of families needing language support continued to rise. Meadows knew that she could not address these community problems directly, but students and families brought issues from home into the school, and she and her staff needed to provide the right kinds of support for learners to succeed.

The transportation program, for example, seemed to be working for families involved in the sports programs, but she did not know how the other families felt about the school's transportation efforts. Meadows did know, however, that a group of parents of successful students had started a website to oppose the new inquiry‐based science track for students who struggled in math and science. This group of vocal (and influential) Truman parents argued for keeping the existing science program stable as a college‐prep pathway for their children. Their concerns made her think about how she and her leadership team could reach out better and include these groups in new efforts moving forward.

Meadows thought that meeting these challenges would require better information about current practices and perspectives in the school. The district press to use data to inform decision making led her to reflect on the information resources she had built with her Truman team. Last year, she persuaded a colleague from her graduate program to join her staff to reform the school data practices. Together they built a strong data system, based on the district data warehouse, to track student progress, disciplinary and placement data, and teacher professional development information. Teachers had access to Google Classroom sites to complement their in‐person classrooms; students had access to personal sites to collect and share their work. Meadows thought that if any school in the district had access to the right information to inform planning and progress, it was Truman.

The data the school had collected, however, proved too thin and too removed from practice to guide decision making about strategic priorities. Meadows knew, for example, that the student discipline referral rate had declined in the past year, but she did not know why. It was tempting to attribute the change to the restorative justice program, but she also knew that this was a controversial program and that not all teachers knew about it or how it worked. She knew that the ACT scores had risen slightly over the past two years, but again, she didn't know why. The data they had collected could not tell her team about the effects of their initiatives on the school community or even whether the school community knew about what the leadership team was trying to do in the school.

In her graduate program, several professors had taught about the scientific methods that evaluators use to measure the effects that interventions have had on program outcomes. While these methods excited the research part of her mind, her practical side knew that the controls required for these kinds of methods to be correctly applied could never work in a school like Truman. If experimental design could not fit into the fast‐paced world of everyday school leadership and if the data systems she and her team developed could not guide their practice, then how could she get the information she needed to make progress in her school?

It was this inability to connect her practice‐based initiatives with results that made her uneasy about her school. So much of what she did every day seemed to be putting out fires—reacting to the problems of other people and developing “good‐enough” solutions on the fly. Even when she felt that she and her staff were doing good work, it was difficult to see how their efforts made a difference in how teachers and students interacted every day. With a data system that seemed to focus on the outcomes of the work, she found herself at a loss to think through how she and her team could access the information they needed to understand how their initiatives shaped day‐to‐day practices and influenced the academic, social, and future lives of Truman students. And if she was struggling with making sense of how practices and results fit together in her school, imagine how leaders new to the field felt or leaders in schools that were failing or beset with resource problems.

What she and her colleagues needed, she thought, was a map. A map that could tell educators where they were on the path to improvement and point them in the directions they needed to go. A map of leadership practice.

1Distributed Leadership in Action

THERE IS NO DOUBT THAT YOU KNOW GOOD LEADERSHIP WHEN YOU SEE IT. The energy in great schools is so palpable that you can feel it the minute you walk into the school.

Throughout our careers, we have worked to understand and capture the dynamics of great school leadership. Having taught in a top‐ranked educational leadership preparation program for over 20 years, we have seen many changes in public education, policy, and the expectations of leaders. One of the most exciting and energizing experiences we have had is working in schools with great leaders who strengthen educator capacity and improve learning opportunities for children. We know what creates that energy and what school leaders can do to create the conditions for students, teachers, parents, and staff to engage.

In response to the question, “Who leads?” you might say the principal is the formal, designated leader of the school. After all, the principal is responsible for establishing direction, developing people, and building the capacity of the school organization.1 The principal sets the tone and ultimately is responsible for the success or failure of the school. A focus on the leadership of the principal is important because a strong principal is critical to the long‐term success of the school.

But focusing narrowly on the principal as the leader of the school ignores the many important contributions of others to the nuanced tapestry of leadership that occurs throughout every school day. Consider this sampling from a day in the life of Truman High School:

7:00–7:45 a.m.: The leadership team meets to work on restructuring the school day to create time for teacher teams to collaborate around student work and problems of practice.

7:50–8:00 a.m.: A student confronts one of his peers in the hallway before class and prevents him from bullying another student.

8:00–8:05 a.m.: In morning announcements, the principal welcomes the school community and elicits feelings of school pride as she reminds them what it means to be a Truman Wildcat!

10:00–11:00 a.m.: The math department chair engages math teachers in an examination of data showing that Truman students who fail freshman math are 80 percent less likely to graduate compared to other students. The team plans a strategy to better support students. They agree to examine the data further and determine what areas of freshman math trip up these students the most.

12:00–12:45 p.m.: A paraprofessional works through lunch to help a student struggling in Spanish class.

2:00–2:45 p.m.: A special educator coteaches with the freshman English teacher to ensure that all students can master the core learning outcomes for the course. They plan to share their experiences and mentor other teacher teams during upcoming staff development time.

3:45–4:30 p.m.: The night janitor comes in early to work with the art teacher to clean up a messy student project designed to spark student creativity and expression.

7:00–8:30 p.m.: The choir director supervises a student rehearsal of

The Wiz

as part of her commitment to creating a welcoming space to engage and support students.

Large and small, these and many other regular acts of leadership contribute to shaping Truman's culture of learning.

Understanding the kind of leadership needed in today's educational environment means thinking in a new way about leaders and leadership. Obviously the principal plays a critical leadership role in the school, but the principal's leadership works by engaging and building leadership capacity throughout the school. In other words, the work of leadership is distributed across educators and through tasks that shape the everyday practices of teaching and learning.

LEADERSHIP AND SPAN OF CONTROL

An interesting difference between schools and businesses is that in schools, the span of control—the number of employees a single supervisor oversees—is about three times what it is in business. In business today, a typical manager oversees about 10 employees. But in an average elementary school, one leader oversees 33 employees.2 The span of control is even larger in secondary schools.

In the past, this organizational design wasn't a major problem because leaders were expected to hire good teachers and let them do their jobs. Teachers were considered to be professionals who operated largely on their own. Expectations of teacher autonomy led school leaders to adopt loose, compliance‐based practices of supervision and left professional development to the interests of teachers. Teachers taught, and the responsibility—and the consequences—for learning fell on students.

But an interesting shift occurred with implementation of No Child Left Behind in 2002. This law changed the expectations of schools and school leaders. The law required that over a ten‐year period, each succeeding class of students needed to produce at higher and higher levels as measured by standardized test scores. The requirement that schools continuously improve scores over time meant that leaders had to continuously build the skills of educators to produce higher and higher levels of achievement. Leaders could no longer simply control hiring and firing; now they were responsible for improving the ability of educators to refine their practices in order to improve outcomes.

Meanwhile, the span of control didn't get any smaller. In support of these improvement expectations, policymakers adopted new curriculum standards, student assessments, evaluation systems, new approaches to special education, and new approaches to student behavior management. These policies provided guidance and resources for schools to improve, but they also required significant time to reevaluate current practices and consider how to best add these new approaches to the daily work of schools.

Even under the old management model, researchers found that principals' days were packed with a series of brief, fragmented interactions with students, parents, teachers, staff, and community members.3 The new responsibilities for teacher development come on top of managing campus safety, building and grounds, scheduling, public appearances, budget and finance, welcoming visitors, and building a positive climate. Being the principal of a high school is like being a CEO or a mayor of a medium‐sized city.

While the federal No Child Left Behind Act has been replaced by the Every Student Succeeds Act, the changes in expectations of schools and school leaders ushered in by No Child Left Behind remain. At the core of the new expectations for school leadership is that leaders can help to improve teaching and learning. Teaching is a complex and uncertain skill. A principal can readily manage the basics of teaching—making sure teachers are in the classroom, on task, maintaining order, covering relevant material, and meeting district or state curriculum and safety requirements. But being responsible for moving teaching practice to the next level requires more than passing through a classroom to make sure everything is all right. It requires intensive engagement with data to understand the dynamics of teaching and learning in the classroom, and making sometimes seemingly small shifts in teaching practice to move learning forward. Most important, it means having the ability to see when teaching is working, when it is not, and knowing what to do to help teachers and learners improve.

LEADER OF LEADERS

In the past, we have thought about leadership as a relationship between leaders and followers. It was the responsibility of the leader to lead and the follower to follow. But we have begun to think about leadership differently. Leadership is not about the relationship between leaders and followers, but the relationship between coleaders and their work.

Schools are service organizations. Anyone who works in a service organization can tell you that the face of the organization is the face of every individual in that organization. When we walk into the bank and talk to the bank teller, he or she is representing the face of that bank. Similarly, when a student has an experience with a teacher in the classroom, that teacher is the face of the school. Because each individual plays such an important role in carrying out the work of the organization, it is important to get everyone on the same page, with the same goals, and the same understandings of how to respond in ways that will move the organization forward. This is a major leadership task for managers in service organizations.

In carrying out the goals of the organization, leadership acts occur all the time and throughout the school. They are carried out by the custodian who makes a connection with a shy student. They are carried out by the school secretary who works with a student to get a message to her parents so she can stay late after school to finish a test. They are carried out by the teacher who seeks feedback and support from other teachers to help him better support student learning. And they are carried out by the student who stands up to confront his peers about a racist remark.

Understanding leadership in this way draws attention away from the role of the leader to the practices that need to be carried out for the school to be effective. It means that the principal doesn't have to have his or her hand in everything that happens in the school. Instead, the principal's role shifts to creating supporting structures and expectations so that many individuals can stand up and take responsibility for carrying out the critical leadership tasks of the school. Mapping leadership means describing how leadership is directed and shared across an organization and guiding the work necessary for effective practice.

DISTRIBUTED LEADERSHIP IN ACTION

The model that principals alone lead schools is outmoded and increasingly irrelevant. Yet many of our ideas to support and evaluate school leadership are still focused on the principal. We need new ways of thinking that take the shared and structural nature of school leadership into account. Distributed leadership theory provides a model for us to map school leadership practice.

Distributed leadership theory began in the late 1990s as a way to think about leadership as a set of tasks directed, shared, and enacted across the school organization. It was initially shaped by pioneering work in distributed cognition. The traditions of cognitive psychology emphasized that understanding thinking depended on studying what went on in the heads of actors. Distributed cognition researchers felt that thinking and acting unfolded in interaction with others and with the environment, and that to think about cognition in terms of the individual alone missed the reality of how cognition unfolds in the world.

In his book Cognition in the Wild, Edwin Hutchins analyzed how navigators pilot ships.4 A central concept in distributed cognition theory is the task, a unit of work that organizes the efforts of actors and is supported (or constrained) by the context of action. While a task can be a novel response to an emergent situation, most tasks are repeated in ways that make work familiar to actors. Over time, repeated tasks help actors form routines that guide action. Learning these routines helps new actors become familiar with how to act and think. For expert actors, routines become the critical resource for how to deal with novelty. Routines become the standard operating procedures for navigational teams to handle ordinary events and react effectively to the extraordinary. Over time, the network of routines forms the organizational culture. The culture becomes a self‐defining, and self‐preserving, force that bends new initiatives and new actors to expected traditions of the way things are done.